


Strength of Will

by Kodawari



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Not A Fix-It, Self-Hatred, already wrote something similar, but it's fun to go back and look at it from a different angle, he just feels this way about himself, honest to goodness he's one of my faves so i obviously don't feel this way about him, not anti-stephen, one-sided feelings not so much attraction, stephen's complex feelings on the matter of tony's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-27 18:16:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20050429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kodawari/pseuds/Kodawari
Summary: A strong will can get you anywhere and anything.  Personally, Stephen never wanted it to be pushed this far.(Again, not anti-Stephen, it's just his inner thoughts. He's only human.)





	Strength of Will

**Author's Note:**

> Semi-inspired by the fact Stephen couldn't tell Tony what would happen otherwise it wouldn't work. Naturally, that must have meant in some of the realities he did... Also partially inspired by this gifset: https://stvenrogers.tumblr.com/post/186597497898/no-stephen-you-lack-a-spine
> 
> I sincerely wish I was more eloquent for all your sakes. I always get flustered that my writing comes off as more prosaic than poetic. I kinda grew frustrated with this and just wanted it done after mulling over it for days.

_“The hardest choices require the strongest wills,” he will say. He will look at him with something akin to pity. How could anyone else understand?_

_But Stephen will know every move on this board, and he will know the horrible things a strong will can breed attached to a man who did not want to harm, so when he speaks he will speak with the anger of a parent to a brash child who knew not what game he played. “I think you’ll find our will equal to yours.”_

_ Because he knows that for five years people of every species across the universe will mourn for the ridiculous amount of life lost. He does not need to cheat at time to see the suicides and the madness, the initial silent defeat and the incomprehensible rage to follow, the consequences of bringing everyone suddenly back. Half the population restored added to the just now recovering one. Only an optimistic fool would refuse to acknowledge that aspect. _

_ He has to weigh all this in the balance opposite inaction against Thanos. Death is a part of life until it's manufactured by a madman. Stephen's will is strong, you cannot be anything else in the face of that. _

_ Once Mordo accused him of lacking a spine and he berated him in turn for lacking an imagination. It was a great irony he tortures himself with it when he decides to gain an edge with a creative use of the Eye. One before him had done the same, and she had prevented countless terrible futures. _

_At what cost, Master? We make all sorts of excuses for our actions. We can be so unkind, we can kill with good intentions... _

_There's always another way. Initially he tries everything within his power to minimize the casualties. Through six months in the simulation he struggles... It's looking grim, and the hope that follows is not much better. They may win yet, but someone would die. Someone _ had _to die and he had to guarantee it. Without a second thought he throws himself in first. In every reality Thanos is sure to eliminate him as quickly as he can through distraction or death. So much for a wizard full of empty tricks. Stephen knows that the essence of a person could span across every timeline in every possible facet, a great crystal oversoul shining in a different light. Thanos fears him, even if it isn't going to be the Thanos of now. _

_No...no, he cannot accept it be anyone else. But if not him, then...who? _

_He runs through the roster. He watches each of them die and each time he tries anew to prevent it. He whittles it down to the inevitable point of a knife which he held with the all the regret of an novice executioner. He refutes defeat, he tries again. There's another way... until there isn't. _

_He had all the time in the world yet none at all. Outside they would need him soon. He has to hurry. _

_He sees his success... and he shudders because now it's certain. Tony Stark, the man with whom he had argued he would not hesitate to let die...Ultimately Stark would make the sacrifice, and the all the lives Stephen was inevitably condemning consolidate into this one man, an unwilling, living symbol of a battle of wills. _

_ When the moment comes, he will see himself hesitate, his own arrogant words coming back to bite and shame him._

***

In how many realities did he try to find that other way? Yet in how many did he try to ease Tony into the acceptance of his fate?...to ease his own guilt?

It was the first run in the final scenario. Stephen had only argued with him in real time mere hours ago, a now meaningless dispute. Although embarrassed at his own paltry reasons for his outright disdain at Tony's overblown ego, he tried to twist it to his advantage in remaining stoic. He could not dwell on his own personal feelings towards Tony, all that mattered was the best outcome. Stephen was unknowingly playing a game with himself, a bet that he could remain rational. 

An answer to Tony's question : "You're the one...you wield the Gauntlet and defeat Thanos, because you're the only one who will get close enough."

Tony was silent for as long as the conditions allowed. "So, I die?" He looked him in the face and then away, and he considered. 

And he hesitated. 

And they lost.

_Was that a perverse sense of relief he had over not guiding an individual towards their death? If he could barely kill a man who threatened his own life, how much more moral harm could this operation cost him? Now the entire universe had been banished and reset, but it had been out of his control. No, he had to try again. He swore an oath to protect reality. He won't break another..._

In a different attempt: "You're the only one who will get close enough, you have to make the Snap or everything dies this time. Our lives are in your hands."

Again, that hesitation at the vital moment. Each time Stephen sees a different aspect of Tony, a kinship in suffering begins to form despite his intentions to the contrary. _A growing sense of scabbed over trauma bleeding fresh, the sensation of living a thousand sacrificial lives all at once._

It's a mistake to entangle your feelings with the patient's. Stephen began to resent all of this, the external circumstances preventing him from keeping this man alive. If Tony could share in this repeating hell he would resent it too. There was another reason why it was wise to keep yourself aloof: you might become attached. For self preservation he continued to press for honesty, anything to get Tony to accept his fate with some sense of dignity, anything to push away his feelings of dreaded responsibility: "I saw the future and in every one _except_ this one, you've hesitated. I know you're afraid but it's the only way. I meant it, I didn't want this. None of us did."

"Who did?" A comradeship in a losing situation? "I'll figure something out..." You could have mistaken it for arrogance. Stephen knew better, it was the fear of a diagnosis. The doctor telling a patient the bad news. 

Stephen broke his focus, _please, anything, think of anything where you survive..._

It was as if Tony read his thoughts when he said to himself with a modicum of uncertainty, "...I'm a hero, of course I will." 

Stephen had thought: _We're just people who made the choice to put everyone's life above our own._

Even still...Tony could not do it. The list of Stephen's and his failures would have been uncountable had he not his eidetic memory. He was nearing on ten months total and that part of him which was still trapped forever in that time looped battle against Dormammu panicked. Stephen began to resent the circumstances that forced his hand and then himself when dark thoughts of his own misfortune made trite comparisons. In a quiet fit of piquancy he argued he had to make the tough choice, who else could have made it with such a bloodied heart? Was Tony the only one to suffer? Stephen would live with survivor's guilt, the executioner's guilt until the day _he_ died... Within the broken time it takes to blink an eye and for a seedling to become a tree, Stephen remembered his place. Something in Tony wanted to believe this wasn't the end, that there was another way. 

A verse from out of the blue remembered: 'All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should neither kill nor cause another to kill.' 

He wonders if oaths meant anything at all and if anyone should even bother to take them.

If he had any lingering, petty annoyance with Tony it was utterly cast out of his mind now. When he exercised the right of this fatal knife he cut not only Tony, but himself, yet how dare he think his suffering equitable to his. Had he reacted so strongly to Tony's personality because it reminded him of his own? Had he conveniently forgotten compassion in the midst of disagreement? It was hypocritical to judge others by their actions and yourself by your intentions. The man before him was going to die, he would watch it happen _for real_, rehearsed in a million different ways and like a stage director he would guide him, Tony none the wiser. He decided he had no right to anguish when Tony fought for all his worth and still would not bring himself to the final act. Without so much as a few sentences each run of this doomed race he had grown closer to him, he ached for him and the life he had grown in those five years, a life Stephen himself would never have. It was himself who had nothing to lose, the one who could push Tony into the fray with that righteous cause, that oh so difficult decision of who lives and who dies. He had nothing, that was what made him a cold surgeon. Now he balanced a life in the scales and he thought of the utilitarian thing to do and how a single emotion can tip it all out of whack. Who do you choose, when you love them? The nameless multitudes or your friend? Oaths of all sorts be damned, it was his refusal to concede it was done on the principal of the greater good. It was still _wrong._

He could not keep up the pretense of his obdurate persona of a man who always had to be right. He had to humble himself out of grief, out of tenderness for Tony's sake, even if for Tony this was always his first time and would one day be his last. Tony...oblivious Tony, if only he knew how much Stephen cared for him. He finally broke down the walls of his heart, he said: "I don't know what to tell you to make the Snap, I don't know what what causes you to hesitate in the end. Whatever it is you need to overcome it, Tony." He paused, "Tell me, let me take on fate with you, you don't need to do this alone."

There in the middle of a battle Tony locked candid eyes with him in an attitude that harbored no pretense of bravado or pride. He had opened himself up, raw and harsh. "What if it's all for nothing? What if we lose anyway?"

"Do you think this is a waste of your life?" Stephen asked, genuinely concerned. Did he really believe that? Before Stephen could, what? console, bolster him? Tony's gaze grew distant, as if he were looking inward to some other place and some other conversation. He set his features and he resolved himself. 

"What is it?"

"You reminded me of someone, Doc. Long time ago." He flicked him a sketch of a smirk. He never said who that was, and Stephen will not have time to ask. 

In that one Tony fought with resounding conviction. He had lain hands on the Gauntlet for the millionth time and Stephen with his head full of knowledge tried to keep from uselessly interfering... but Tony was his own undoing. Again he hesitated, a look of betrayal in his direction. Or had it been a look of doubt?

And it was the same, thousands of iterations over. If Stephen's own noble suffering had to be a linchpin for this thing to work, then Tony's was something beyond his measure. Each time Stephen wished it had been him. There was a long list of those who could become Sorcerer Supreme, there was only one Iron Man. 

Tony was not a coward and bravery only meant acting before you think in the service of others. It never meant you weren't afraid. 

Stephen could not blame him. Tony wouldn't see his daughter graduate, he would never walk her down the aisle, become a grandfather, or do none of those things and just watch his family grow in whatever shape it would take. _ I'm sorry...I'm sorry. There was no other way..._

He prayed not for the first time that this bitter cup did not have to be shared. A will greater than any of those present or those who would soon arrive demanded attention: time. He knew Thanos would arrive soon, he had seen exactly when. 

The simulation grew a longer tail of zeros and he was nearing on a year. There wasn't any way in which Stephen could convince Tony it was worth it. He was shattered for the lack of control, the smallness in the vastness of an impartial universe, the old familiar thinking that he could make the perfect choice... In that crushing moment of despair Stephen had his epiphany and his heart filled with an indescribable heaviness. He was back at the beginning, in Kamar-Taj. Control through surrender, you cannot beat the river into submission. 

Then it happened. _ He will look back on it and repeat it forever and ever in the circle of a private hell_

“You said one out of fourteen million we win, yeah? Tell me this is it.” An admission of a scientist that fate had played a hand that he could not hedge a bet against, but he sure as hell would try.

If he thought he knew what sorrow was, had he ever truly drowned in its depths? He could not tell him he was sorry for his misgivings, for his own ego placing himself, the self-perceived importance of his duty, above his life. The man who had once carried indescribable destruction on his back and cast it into dead space, who had given all of himself before, could be forgiven of anything. Stephen felt a bond of love as he had never had experienced until then, yet he could not say so and that was the worst torture of all. He surrendered to the current, he stopped trying to convince Tony it was worth it. It wasn't, not from Tony's perspective.

“If I tell you, it won’t happen.”

"You better be right" 

_I would do anything to be wrong_

And Stephen knew, guiltily, that Tony did not think it meant it was one of those tricky twists of fate that cannot be mentioned before the act. He went in blind to the choice to hesitate until he saw the truth, until he chose everyone else above himself. Guided like an animal on the path to slaughter. 

Thanos' will was nothing compared to his; he did not know what good men suffered in attempting to justify their actions. Stephen hated what he had done. In some small way Thanos had his victory in the tale of the executioner and the innocent.

All that knowledge he had to hold back...All the endless apologies that can't bring back the dead.

Anyone could call him a murderer to his face and he would not speak in self defense. It did not matter if on some moralistic technicality he wasn't, if it was one life against trillions. Who ever had to make this choice on this scale? To him it all was the same.

Yet Tony's will was ultimately included in "our will", wasn't it? The will of a _hero_, to protect all that is good no matter the cost. 

If Stephen could read Tony's thoughts in those final moments he would have had the consolation that he did not begrudge the wizard, because he always knew even tucked away in his cabin with this family that his life didn't end there. It was his life's song to never know rest until he died...Saving all these people hadn't been a waste, it had been a privilege. Who else could say those last words of his like he was spitting in the face of death itself? He just needed to stop fighting, to surrender. To rest. 

But Stephen did not know his mind. He only knew his own and the indomitable, terrifyingly strong will that went with it that gave him the fortitude to see a friend through to his death.

_"How many do we win?" He asks even if Stephen sees the hopelessness already in his eyes. He will come to him in the same manner at the final battle, a man who's afraid of what he will lose if Stephen is wrong. How strong the love of his family and friends must be that even the risk of reality itself unraveling doesn't stop him from wanting to be with them every singe day of their lives._

_ For the whole day they had known each other they had seesawed between antagonism and teamwork out of duty, out of a begrudging respect. Now in this moment, this catalyst for the rest of eternity, Stephen cannot tell Tony he has already died. He is alone in the sensation to speaking to a living ghost and the dissonance that brings. He will not tell him how wrong he was about him, how in his attitude of imperiousness he forgot to love everyone as he loves himself and more so, how Tony is misguided in thinking it might all be for naught. Tony is not just a protector of his own family anymore, he's the savior of them all and means so much more than he can imagine. Stephen's words will fail him in the end and Tony will not benefit from any cold comfort he can bring. In the end, when his only expression of sorrow can be his tears, he will answer in silence._

_ "...One"_

_Well, Mordo, I grew my spine._


End file.
